By Amanda Moreno

It seems like talk of releasing is coming at us from all angles these days. The astrology points to major opportunities for letting go, and it seems that so many people I come across are having the experience of feeling like they’re entering an entirely new way of being. I know that has been the case for me.

Photo by graywacke/A Landing a Day

There are times when being aware of astrological transits and the opportunities for growth that they imply can result in feeling a lot of pressure, especially for those of us who are really trying to engage our internal processes. Hell, it’s a lot of pressure for those of us who aren’t.

Do we need to be consciously aware of what we’re letting go of? That might be ideal in that consciousness is perhaps what helps us to hone and refine the intention and vice versa. But right now it seems like the opportunities to let go, release and heal are hurtling our direction so quickly that it almost seems impossible to take conscious advantage of all of it.

I love astrology as a tool for expanding consciousness. Sometimes it just reflects a clusterfuck of paradox, though.

I keep seeing the theme of fate vs. free will popping up, especially in the astrological community. If it’s all fated, is it even possible to make the wrong decision? Isn’t failure part of the plan? Or perhaps it’s more along the lines of…fatedness in terms of spiritual and emotional trends, and free will to react to them.

I had to laugh when I read some astrologer’s commentary that those individuals who are ‘more spiritually evolved’ don’t face the same crisis and catastrophe faced by those individuals who aren’t. That kind of black-and-white thinking pretty much makes me insane — or at least it would if I spent much time on it. I don’t see evolution as acting in an inherently positive progression, for one thing. Things don’t always evolve for the better. Take, for example, a toxic environment in which species evolve into things that live underground. Is that a positive outcome? What about those we would deem “spiritually evolved,” such as the Dalai Lama. He’s certainly experienced his share of crisis.

Isn’t consciousness the critical key in evolving in a “positive” way? Addressing the issues that lead to the toxic environment with consciousness and awareness of the biological realities of evolution so that we don’t end up living underground? Or understanding that Saturn isn’t some big dude in some other realm who really wants to shove your face in your mistakes when you inevitably make them, but rather a force for constructive change and opportunity to take responsibility in order to experience reward.

Bringing consciousness to our lives can be tricky. Astrology is so helpful for consciously engaging our lives, but it sometimes amplifies experiences and reactions for good or bad. It can make things really complicated. I was reading Rudhyar’s Astrology and the Modern Psyche the other day. I have to quote:

We are dealing with the fact that the concentrated and eager study of one’s chart … is bound to force the potentialities of the individual life into more complete actualization; thus to identify the so-called ‘evil’ as well as the so-called ‘good’ in the individual personality. And, as human beings are usually more struck by and respond more crucially to the ‘bad’ than to the ‘good,’ if a person strives after self-knowledge by studying his birth chart with an intense belief in the validity of astrology, this study very often leads to an intensification of Karmic confrontations.

Ah, yes. Once again the attempt to bring consciousness proves potentially complicated. I’m so very into the idea that astrology is uniquely poised to help us transition into a more sustainable way of being because it creates a cosmological framework in which the individual can orient themselves within a tribe of other individuals. It’s so very Age of Aquarius in that way. But I sometimes think it should come with a disclaimer because, as helpful as it is, it can also be really complicated.

As modalities like astrology help us to expand our conscious awareness, they also help us to know or expand or reveal the faces of the gods and how they are reflected in our lives. In that sense, it’s incredible to ponder the philosophical (and practical) implications of the thousands of newly named objects in the past hundred years or so. They represent so many more opportunities for conscious engagement with parts of ourselves.

But it’s important also to keep things focused enough to be manageable. It’s okay not to ‘know’ everything. Which brings me back to the beginning, and the letting go. At this point, I’ve done so much releasing ritual this year that I’m more interested in resting and in celebrating and filling up all that space with as much joy and love as possible.

I looked at my chart earlier this week and saw some more transits, exact as of this writing today (Thursday) that could be paving the way for more healing and letting go. I think I just decided, however, that instead of crafting another ritual or meditation to facilitate the “letting go” of some things related to those parts of my chart, I am instead going to consciously use some free will and let go of doing more ritual for now.

In fact, I think I’m going to go home and watch something mindless. Because that’s what I want to do, having come through another season of intensity and finally returning to my more lighthearted and joyful persona. And because part of my path forward, as indicated by my chart, is taking the initiative to do what I want. Perhaps I will take a few moments to light a candle and reflect on what I’ve learned about these transits first, just to acknowledge them.

Conscious use of astrology? Free will? Fate? I know not. But I’m happy to get to experiment with it.

By Amanda Moreno

I’m sitting here trying to write a piece for this week that is intelligent and interesting. Mostly, though, I’m trying to keep it out of the personal realms. I once again find myself needing time off from putting my own story out there. So I’m trying to be objective yet relevant.

Photo by graywacke/A Landing a Day

It’s not really working, though. I’m sitting here marveling at how incredible this massive obsidian arrowhead ring feels on my finger and how funny it is that I have a very strong urge to put the piece of smoky quartz to my right on my forehead and just see what it has to say.

It’s the night before the equinox/eclipse/New Moon extravaganza and I know I’ll be doing some ritual tonight, but I got sick of trying to plan out the details, because I just feel the need to let go. But I also want to make the most of these energies. They do feel huge collectively speaking, and I really am leaning into the belief that we have come through something huge and now need to celebrate and then get the heck to work. I also have a point in a natal T-square at 28 Pisces, and it’s a T-square that sure could use some healing, so…I just want to ‘do the right thing.’

Can you hear the Virgo coming through? I have three planets in Virgo, and can attest to the fact that sometimes that Virgo energy feels like a mean trick. It’s so attention-to-detail oriented, and when it’s triggered as defense mechanism it analyzes for the sake of analysis rather than for the sake of finding a solution. It also feels like it just serves as a compulsive distraction sometimes — like it’s just focusing on all the microscopic, teeny-tiny little details in order to avoid the huge, screaming, totally undifferentiated abyss looming across the way over there in Pisces, threatening to swallow up all the details. Poor Virgo.

I write that and suddenly I remember a cultural anthropology class I took once. It focused on the changing images of Jesus over time. Cultural context is everything, and at this moment I’m reminded of the surfer Jesus of the Sixties — tan, bleach blonde hair, dazed smile. Totally, dude.

I went to a lecture given by Richard Tarnas last week. It was incredible and involved all of my favorite things — the evolution of consciousness, cosmology, bridging the mythopoetic and the analytic, paradigm shift, astrology as Rosetta Stone… It also got me thinking about the ways in which it does seem that we are evolving the archetypes over time.

Towards the end of the lecture, someone asked Mr. Tarnas about whether he used traditional or modern rulerships, ending his question by saying something to the effect of how some astrologers really think it’s OK to use modern rulerships and that ‘we really have to do something about that.’

I couldn’t help but laugh. One of my least favorite facets of religion (and I include astrology in this, as well as scientism, which can be just as fundamentalist as any other belief system) is a tendency to cling to ‘truth’ as if it is a rigid structure. Nothing makes a religion lose its vitality and relevance like refusal to change. That’s not to say that tradition doesn’t have a place, nor is it to say that teachings should not be handed down, but if religion can’t remain relevant to the hearts of the people, they cannot connect, and they therefore cannot orient themselves to their experience in a way that is meaningful — resulting in chaos.

The context of our lives is always changing, and as we adapt to that, our beliefs have to as well. There was a point in time when surfer-dude Jesus hit the spot. And then came the era of 50 SPF.

The archetypes, or the gods, are at one level timeless and at another level changing. Mr. Tarnas discussed the fact that there is a real drama being played out between human and god — we are playing a role in their expression. Carl Jung posited there was a second act of creation that is perhaps just as important as the first, taking place as humanity becomes conscious. That act of creation is god/gods/goddess/archetypes becoming conscious of themselves. Cultural context is everything here.

I tend to be the type of astrologer who believes there is a place for every kind of astrology, and who places more emphasis on the importance of the astrologer wielding the knowledge with respect and integrity. In my experience, Mars and Pluto are both very much relevant to Scorpio, in that the sign represents the merging of the desires of the ego and the desires of the soul. That understanding makes sense to me and informs the way I practice and use astrology, and it’s an understanding that is supported by my observations and experience.

As we shift into what Eric has called the ‘post’ 2012 era, I’m grateful for a spiritual framework and language such as astrology that helps us to know the faces of the gods, and relate to them through individual experience. Mr. Tarnas quoted Stanislav Grof as saying that astrology is the Rosetta Stone of the psyche. It helps to bridge the mythopoetic, romantic soul with the modern, scientific mind birthed out of the Enlightenment. I suppose in that sense it helps to bridge Pisces and Virgo. And hopefully, as we step into this new phase, it helps us to ground our experience in increased awareness of both the rational and irrational so that we can heal and trust and love.

“Healing” and “trusting” and “loving” — those all seem like good themes for a ritual. I do declare success! Thank you for reading.

By Amanda Moreno

Today I found myself in a familiar headspace: restless and looking once again at PhD programs at California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS). Attending is a pipe dream, being as I’d likely need to take on more debt than is legally possible as I already have quite a bit from my master’s degree. But still, that school is doing incredible work in the realms of philosophy, cosmology and consciousness studies, among other things. When I began my graduate work, it was with the intention of then going to complete an extended academic career at CIIS, and specifically to work with Richard Tarnas.

Photo by graywacke/A Landing a Day

Then, in the spring of 2012, I was shown by the powers that be (in the imaginal realms, that is) that at this point in my life that path would be a way of bypassing the emotional body and that I was to do one-on-one ‘healing’ work with people.

I came out of that session feeling completely detached from a dream I had been passionate about for years. Strange, but I accepted it with the understanding that there might still be time for it later.

About an hour after staring at curriculums and tuition costs and fees this morning, I got an email from an astrologer inviting readers to reflect on what’s happened in their lives since the first of the exact Uranus-Pluto squares on June 24, 2012. It occurred to me that the day before that, on June 23, I had been presenting my graduate work to 30 or so people just before my graduation.

My graduate work more or less focused on the Uranus-Pluto square. I’d gone into the program knowing I wanted to use depth psychology and Richard Tarnas’s work with archetypal astrology and collective movements, and emerged with a familiarity with two additional paradigms: evolutionary astrology (including the form of cathartic regression work I practice) and Joanna Macy’s work with The Great Turning; Ms. Macy also happens to be adjunct faculty at CIIS.

Bear with me here.

My thesis, entitled “Astrological Ritual and the Apocalyptic Imagination,” used three main concepts oriented under the umbrella of depth psychology. First was the image of the mushroom cloud as a primary metaphor for our current apocalyptic rite of passage. Second was ritual as a means of creating containers strong enough to hold and transform our grief and despair for what’s happening to the world. Third, it examined astrology as a paradigm that is universal and yet diverse enough to inform those rituals and help each of us navigate our paths meaningfully in an increasingly individualistic culture.

Since then I’ve done so much frickin’ work with my emotional body. The thing has been uncovered and is alive and writhing and there are so many times when I have no idea what to do with it. I’ve begun to build a ‘private’ practice. I’ve been teaching classes that are very much grounded in Joanna Macy’s work and the philosophies of emotional evolution that I associate with evolutionary astrology and depth psychology.

Today, as I once again looked longingly at the curriculum for a CIIS program, I wondered: is it time? Or am I just avoiding? I’ve been getting hints of avoidance lately, but it’s all quite confusing, as I’ve been getting hints of lots of things, actually. I don’t quite know which way is up and so I’m trying to engage the ways forward that are emerging in my client work: Let’s not create new stories just yet; the old ones are still so close and we need some time to just be and finalize the letting-go process.

Now, I’m well aware that the Uranus-Pluto square doesn’t end with that last exact square on March 16. The planets are in orb essentially through the decade, no longer waffling between waxing and waning squares. The effects will take a while to integrate. The lightning bolts have struck, and now we get to catch up. Hopefully that catching up will involve implementing constructive solutions for sustainable change rather than avoidance. The words of Dave Matthews come to mind here: “We gotta do much more than believe if we really want to change things.”

Lately, I’ve felt a new layer of an old wound coming forward. Let’s just say it has to do with that defining moment when one steps away from the herd and accepts the call of the soul. It’s triggering all kinds of things that I honestly thought I’d dealt with. It feels as if I’m saying goodbye in so many ways, although to what specifically I’m not sure. I’ve never really wanted marriage, career, home ownership and children. But right now those things seem so…comfortable. Even if they also reek of soul annihilation.

Let me rephrase that, though — it feels as if I’m being faced with the option to say goodbye. There’s a finality to it. Although I’ve been anticipating this moment for a long time, my heart is full of apprehension and grief, at least I think it would be if I wasn’t avoiding and feeling a sense of aversion.

Am I avoiding because I’ve done so much emotional-body work and need a break? Is it possible to take a break? Am I avoiding because I’m just not cut out for the work of a healer or peacemaker or person who diverges from a horrendously destructive paradigm? Am I avoiding because I don’t know how to reconcile building an alternative lifestyle while paying rent in a city where rent is skyrocketing? Is the idea that the paradigm is destructive just a false construct of my own beliefs? Or is it because I’m actually standing at a precipice…

I don’t know that I can get answers to these questions (at least not before Saturn goes back into Scorpio…urgh), and for once I’m not really seeking outside for answers. It seems I’ve found myself enmeshed in so many alternative lifestyles all at once that finding counsel that I feel can hold all of it is unlikely. Although I’m keeping this process to myself for the most part, I figure these questions are relative to the collective, and so hopefully they’re relevant to you.

Let’s go ahead and bring it to the objective level. We’ve been through so much, not just in the past few years but in our entire history. Ancient wisdom tells us that everything is inherently connected, that we are an interconnected system and that therefore all that revolution, chaos and upheaval is flowing through you and me as much as it is through any being more acutely and directly affected. But then, so are all the love, hope and compassion, even if compassion needs insight in order to prevent burn out.

What a long, strange trip it’s been. One thing feels clear: of all the paradigms I’ve brought together for my own journey during the Uranus-Pluto square, the ideas of Joanna Macy’s Work That Reconnects are the ones that bring me the deepest sense of being grounded and effective time after time. At the “beginning” of this phase, I was linked into that paradigm, and now I feel like I’m coming home to it once again. Perhaps it’s time to pay attention to that.

By Amanda Moreno

Somewhere around ten years ago I met a dude who recommended I read Daniel Quinn’s The Story of B and Ishmael. I did and was introduced to many ideas I’d never been able to articulate but that resonated at my own personal level of common sense. One of these was the idea that each of the world’s main religions was a salvation-based religion; religions that had, for one reason or another, been sculpted into dogmas that emphasized the inherent suffering of the human life and the need for salvation, which typically arrived from the outside.

Photo by graywacke/A Landing a Day

Indeed, the salvation myth seems to be one of those ideas that has taken an insidious and incessant stranglehold on the modern paradigm. Through a god that will come and save us, through alien beings who will either bring the return of light and knowledge or cataclysmic death, through leaders in power who need to be making better decisions, through our children who will have to pick up the slack, through a pill that can regulate blood pressure or mood or ovulation or take away symptoms from a cold so that we can go back to the grind…

Once again, as so often happens in these pieces, I’m aware of the oversimplification of the above statements. Of course, we also have memes in modern culture that support the opposite: “Be the change you wish to see in the world” comes to mind. But the ethos of waiting for salvation from above or from outside seems to mix quite nicely with the psychic overwhelm inherent in modern culture — we tend to shut down, repress or deny rather than deal with the emotions that stem from watching the war state become perpetual, glaciers dying, ignorance spreading like radiation (or radiation spreading like ignorance?)… and on, and on.

It also mixes in a really interesting way with the idea that we are each special, chosen and unique. But what will we do with our uniqueness? Display it on Facebook for personal gratification and then let others do the heavy lifting? Hm.

I recently took off for a few days to spend some time at the very cold, stark ocean of the Pacific Northwest. My intention had been to spend as much time outdoors as possible, but a cleverly timed cold made it clear my recalibration needed to be a bit more…well, internal. I did make it to the ocean each day for a period of time, and I did get to spend time with books and podcasts and writing and cooking. But there were also the hours in the evening when I just allowed myself some fallow time — with The Lord of the Rings and a few episodes of the first season of Heroes.

I definitely have a penchant for fantasy and for super-hero movies and TV shows. For one thing, there’s a level of mindless indulgence that just feels so good, partially because it’s not entirely mindless — these kinds of movies appeal to my own sense of what is possible and feelings of being different (but special, of course).

Here’s the thing, though. Salvation-based religions — Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, Judaism — have morphed to teach us that living is suffering and that we are to seek ultimate liberation from that suffering through transcending the human form in some way. Through striving to become something more than human, something purified or supernatural. Something less attached, less sinful, less dense. I suppose I can get on board with the attachment thing, but the ‘sin’ and the density? Isn’t that why we’re here?

Okay, maybe not the entire reason. But in my cosmological framework, at least as it currently exists, we incarnated here to learn about density. As for sin…well, the act of sinning is based on going against moral codes that seem to be quite set in stone — and isn’t morality more fluid than that?

The fact is, in so many of the salvation-based religions, ‘sin’ is bound up in enjoying the flesh, in enjoying being in density. I see where this can be problematic when balance is lost and gluttony occurs, but… well, orgasms sure aren’t linked primarily to procreation. They happen whether or not a baby is being conceived. Furthermore, although I do believe that the pursuit of evolving and elevating consciousness is one of our primary functions, I also believe that we, as humans, get to do that through exploring our bodies and our emotions and how they connect to the heart and the spirit.

In any case, I’m weary these days of the emphasis on external salvation. That’s not to say I don’t have my own fascination with Pleaidians or Atlantis/Lemuria or beings of light (or X-Men or Froddo Baggins) but it’s more in the sense that by learning about these stories and myths I can apply what I learn to my own experience. I can orient myself to my surroundings; whether I consider the myths to be fact or fiction is secondary to the heart-centered lessons I take away. This applies to my fascination with the Egyptian empire, or the Minoan, or the Etruscan. There is something within our history as a species that I want to learn from. But I don’t want to reify it into being more than me, or godlike.

Because, you see, what I realize is that these mythological and fantastical characters are idealized versions of ourselves, even with all of their flaws. And we cannot wait for them, or someone like them, to come save us. We have to learn from the stories, take their lessons to heart, integrate what fits using discernment and instinct, and spit out the rest so that we can become those idealized versions, complete with our flaws and our misgivings and darkness, but well aware of our gifts. So that we can, in fact, be the change we wish to see in the world. So that we can save ourselves from the inside out, or at least realize that we are perfect, in perfect time and perfect place. Whatever the hell that means.

You are special. You are unique — perhaps even the ‘Chosen One’. The thing is, though, we all are. And so we must each take the initiative to uncover and cultivate our unique gifts and bring them out, in the spirit of love and hope and some kind of grounded service. At least that’s where I sit in terms of the “why are we here living this crazy existence?” question at the moment.